President Barack Obama meets with Lindsay Lawlor, of San Diego, Calif., and his creation, a 17-foot-tall, 2,200-lb robotic giraffe that “walks” on wheels and is powered by a 12-horsepower hybrid fuel-engine motor, during his tour on the South Lawn of the White House to meet with students, entrepreneurs and inventors, during the first ever White House “Maker Faire.” President Obama is highlighting new tools and techniques that promote fledgling businesses create and market their products in an effort to focus attention on US manufacturing need for science and math education

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"'If you can imagine it, then you can do it' ... That's a pretty good motto for America." —President Obama #NationOfMakers

President Barack Obama holds up cell phone that is plugged into a “soofa” a solar powered bench, that Sandra Richter of Cambridge, Massachusetts, helped designed with allows people to charge their phones

As part of his year of action and this week’s focus on efforts that will expand opportunity by spurring manufacturing, innovation and entrepreneurship, the President will also announce new steps the Administration and its partners are taking to increase the ability of more Americans, young and old, to have access to these tools and techniques and to bring their ideas to life. Among the efforts being launched by the President at the White House Maker Faire: Helping Makers launch new businesses and create jobs, with more than 13 federal agencies and companies including Etsy, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Local Motors offering Makers a suite of support services including expanded access to start-up grants, strong relationships with American manufacturers and major retailers, and business mentoring and training. Dramatically expanding the number of students that have the opportunity to become Makers, with the Department of Education and five other agencies;

over 150 colleges and universities; more than 130 libraries; and major companies ranging including Intel, Autodesk, Disney, Lego, 3D Systems, and MAKE committing to create more Makerspaces, enlist more educators in teaching Making, and launch other programs that allow students access to the tools and mentors that will bring their ideas to life. Challenging Makers to tackle our most pressing problems, from Maker Nurses prototyping new tools that will aid in patient care, to Makers expanding our frontiers in space, to Makers here and abroad developing low-cost technologies that can improve the livelihoods of the world’s most vulnerable people. America has always been a nation of tinkerers, inventors, and entrepreneurs. In recent years, a growing number of Americans have gained access to technologies such as 3D printers, laser cutters, easy-to-use design software, and desktop machine tools, with even more being created by the day. These tools are enabling more Americans to design and build almost anything.

If President Barack Obama is mingling with inventors, sooner or later there has to be a robot. On Wednesday, it was Russell, the 17-foot electric giraffe towering in the South Lawn of the White House, a symbol of the quirky and clever creations Obama wanted to showcase on a day devoted to innovation. “New tools and technologies are making the building of things easier than ever,” Obama told entrepreneurs and students who gathered at the White House at its first Maker Faire. “There is a democratization of manufacturing that is potentially available because of technology.” As part of a weeks-long emphasis on the economy, Obama was promoting the use of new tools and techniques to start up new businesses, to boost manufacturing and to strengthen science and math education.

“We’ve got to make sure that more Americans have the skills and opportunities to land a job in a growing industry or to create entire new industries,” he said. “That’s why I’m declaring today a national day of making.” Among the South Bay inventions spotlighted at the event was a $5 chemistry set by Stanford professor Manu Prakash and a 3-D printer from Mountain View-based Made in Space. Besides the giant giraffe, a huge red weather balloon hovered over the Rose Garden and a menacing dinosaur head rested in a hallway. A Philadelphia non-profit group demonstrated a fuel-efficient car. Another showed off a solar energy unit. “What on earth have you done to my house?” Obama joked. Obama always seems engrossed by technological innovations, though he joked about the name Maker Faire as a gathering for new and creative products. “Why is there an ‘E’ at the end of ‘faire’?” he said. “Is there jousting? Do we all have to get dressed up, or what?….This is America. We don’t have ‘E’s’ at the end of ‘fair.'”

Cindy, I may do just that because I’ve been at the computer since 7:30 this morning. Today is my work-at-home day, which always gives me a chance to peruse on the Diary and listen to Jay’s briefings live.

The former head of the CIA and one of the most highly respected generals in modern U.S. warfare said it was only wise to offer military support if the political conditions were exactly right in Iraq, a scenario that is virtually impossible to imagine in the near-future. “This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias, or a Shia on Sunni Arab fight,” he said.

Petraeus said the only way the U.S. could intervene without further destabilizing Iraq would be if the Shia-led government in Baghdad was seen as fair and representative throughout Iraq. “If America is to support then it would be in support of a government against extremists rather than one side of what could be a sectarian civil war,” “It has to be a fight of all of Iraq against extremists, who happen to be Sunni Arabs, but extremists that are wreaking havoc on a country.”…..

…Although Petraeus was careful not dismiss the idea of airstrikes entirely, he made it clear that his pre-conditions for support could not be met by the current government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “The surge in Iraq, the surge that mattered most was not the surge in forces it was the surge of ideas that changed our strategy,” he said. “You cannot have 18 to 20 percent of the population feeling disenfranchised; feeling that it has no stake in the success of the country, in fact it has a stake in the failure of Iraq. Of course we reached out to the Sunni Arabs.”

He said there was a chance in the post-surge environment for Iraq to avoid this kind of bitter sectarian warfare but it was allowed to slip away. “[Iraq] really had an enormous opportunity back in 2011, it has made progress in certain areas but has not capitalized on that opportunity in the way that we had all hoped that they would,” he said…..

“The United States helped to set up a series of initiatives designed to co-opt the Sunni community, but many of them were allowed to wither under Maliki. “Unfortunately those agreements have been undermined by sectarian actions, going after Sunni Arab political figures and so forth, and the failure to continue to pay salaries to certain individuals and the quite harsh treatment of demonstrators in the wake of some of the actions that led to protest so there has to be a huge idea here.”

Anytime, Neena..I hadn’t realized you had posted a link (still catching up while watching World Cup), but the sheer irony of him having the exact public position as the Obama administration……contrary to what McCain was screaming about……after saying “fire the whole Nat. Sec team & bring in Petraeus” has me with a wily smirk on my face!

This White House never ceases to amaze me. Such originality and creative thinking. Thank you Nerdy Wonka for chronicling today’s event with fabulous photos, tweets and commentary. Nicely done as always.

It’s a brilliant idea, LH. You have to have thousands and thousands of ideas and attempts before something clicks, but when it does a whole world can open up with new jobs and opportunities. Only the Obama Administration could come up with something this out of the box.

I am amazed why anyone would pay Dick Cheney any attention. So the dam mess Cheney and G.W. got this country in was right. They invaded Iraq, by lying to the American people. Then before they left office they left this country economy in such a mess that we are still recovering.

After repeatedly criticizing President Barack Obama, actor James Woods suggested in a tweet late Tuesday that his politics may cost him work in Hollywood.

Woods has been critical of Obama before but in the past few days seems particularly incensed at the president’s handling of the partial government shutdown. He tweeted, for example: “This President is a true abomination. To have barricaded the WW2 vets, but allow illegal aliens privilege…”

On other occasions, Woods retweeted photos, articles and more about the shutdown, the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya, problems with Obamacare and the growing national debt. When linking to a New York Times story about a plan to allow noncitizens to monitor polling places in California, he joked that “dead democrats can vote multilingually now.”

It’s merely the fact that most people don’t want to work with vitriolic schmucks, whatever their political leanings. You don’t want to be preparing for a scene and have crazy Uncle James popping off about fluoridation.

Gun accidents happen all the time. People shoot themselves in the foot, the leg, etc., but recently one Georgia man was putting away his gun when it accidentally went off and he ended up shooting himself in the penis. Yikes…

Last week someone, according to 13WMAZ, was at a gas station and tried to holster his .45. The gun went off, and it turned out that the bullet had gone through his dick and “exited out of his buttocks.”

This is just proof of how dam crazy these right wing racists are. Anyone with any sense would be glad that the Benghazi suspect were caught. Not these crazy ass people. Tell Woods if he was any kind of actor he wouldn’t be worry about losing work, tell him to go see that other wing nut who destroy his reputation at the 2012 Republican Convention by talking to a darn empty chair.

Income inequality has been a hot button issue of late. While many big earners on Wall Street, and elsewhere in the financial industry, may not fully grasp the plight of workers, Pimco’s Bill Gross is not one of them and the wage discrepancy concerns him.

“It’s a fundamental factor that will influence not only the U.S. economy, but global economies going forward… It will be destabilizing,” the PIMCO founder and CIO told Yahoo Finance’s Lauren Lyster.

“Labor and capital have to share in the rewards of a productive economy and for the past 25 years labor has gotten the short end of the stick.” Gross suggests that Henry Ford had the right equation when he doubled workers’ wages 100 years ago. “Ford knew way back when, when he paid five bucks an hour to his workers in Detroit, that workers buy cars and that if they were earning a dollar an hour as opposed to five they wouldn’t be able to afford a Ford.”

Gross says we are in need of policies that bring the balance between capital and labor back. “Minimum wage, higher taxes on the rich and all that in combination,” he suggests.

Days ago I saw a tweet disparaging the Maker Faire. I forgot who tweeted it but it was along the lines of ‘Iraq is in crisis and some WH aide decided it was a good idea to put on a Maker’s Faire. They made the event sound so trivial and as if it was a distraction from something. This was a great event, an historic day and fuck that guy. 🙂

“Russian authorities are “using words to destroy meaning”, according to a high-profile group of writers, including two Nobel literature laureates, who have come together to condemn what they called the “waves of propaganda” emanating from the country, in the wake of the “incessant acts of aggression towards Ukraine from the side of the Russian Federation”.

Writers including Mario Vargas Llosa and Tomas Tranströmer, who won the Nobel in 2010 and 2011 respectively, have denounced what they called a “tsunami” of anti-free-expression laws emerging in Russia, citing in particular “treating international NGOs as foreign agents; anti-gay laws; a law permitting the blocking of websites without a court order; laws against discussing Russian history; [and the] religious defamation law”, which criminalises religious insult.

“In the name of security, human rights are being dangerously undermined,” said the writers, as conflict over Russia’s annexing of the Crimea in March continues to escalate. “There has been the illegal annexation of Crimea, which makes us deeply worried about the rights of the Tatar population, and following it armed groups have created violent disorder in the eastern parts of Ukraine with the goal of destabilising the country. Ukrainian PEN has talked about journalists and citizens being shot, murdered, kidnapped and tortured.””

A high-profile group of writers, including two Nobel literature laureates, have come together to condemn what… http://t.co/yeIATsbnYR

So Roland Martin has been going back and forth with those complaining that My Brother’s Keeper should include black women/girls. Some have been saying President Obama has ignored black women/girls. Roland Martin says if we want something for black women/girls then the demands should be made through the WH Office for Women and Girls. I agree with this. Roland Martin got in touch with Valerie Jarrett and she has agreed to speak/meet with ANYONE who wants to address the issue. Critics of Brother’s Keeper could have easily done this. If you can get your complaints on MHP, Washington Post and Salon then you can probably get a meeting with Valerie Jarrett. It’s not as if they went there first and got rejected.

Just got off the phone with Valerie Jarrett @vj44, senior advisor to Pres Obama & head of the WH Office on Women & Girls. She said…

Yeah he really went in on them this morning. Nothing disrespectful but more to the point of “seriously yall are complaining about this?” Very misplaced criticism in my opinion. Seems as if they feel PBO’s focus on boys of color is somehow to the detriment or at the expense of girls of color.

But…but…people demanded that POTUS do something for boys. Didn’t they? I didn’t hear anything about something for girls. I would like to see something for black girls too but folks pretending like they’ve been pushing for it all along and they haven’t.